To bitch or not to bitch

To be or not to be – for the body. In cultural and social contexts, we bandy around concepts and, inevitably, judgements. A dirty body or a clean one? Unblemished or remaining what it is in its essence? Are there universal criteria to resolve these dilemmas? For female artists, physicality is key: guts, digestion and excretion, blemishes, eczema and stains; a laboratory where physiology meets philosophy.

Stains, smudges and blemishes. They recur constantly in Shakespeare’s works, where they are directly present as signs of violence: bloodstains or fatal blow In the performance To bitch or not to bitch, Hertz Haus takes as its starting point Shakespeare’s poem The Rape of Lucrece – but without resorting to direct representations of violence. Instead, it focuses on the traces that rape leaves on a woman’s body and psyche, and on taking care of the wounded body.

Hertz Haus was founded in 2018 by a group of female dancers and choreographers: Magdalena Kowala, Natalia Murawska, Joanna Woźna and Anna Zglenicka. The company creates its own aesthetic by drawing on contemporary dance and physical movement, as well as improvisation and performative actions, thus developing their own language of movement. In 2019, the artists established the Córy Kultury association, whose mission is to bring dance to a wider audience, develop a repertoire, and create an artistic and educational programme.

The company won first prize in The Best Off 2022 – a national competition for Poland’s best independent theatre production – for their show Unbody, which was later included in the Polish Dance Network 2022, allowing it to be presented on Poland’s most important stages. In 2024, Hertz Haus received the main award in the SzekspirOFF competition at the 28th Shakespeare Festival for the performance To bitch or not to bitch.